The growth was due mainly to higher sales in the transportation equipment industry.

In constant dollars, sales rose 2.0%, slightly more than the gain in current dollar sales, reflecting a slight decrease in prices of products sold by Canadian manufacturers in February.

Sales in the transportation equipment industry grew 6.6% to $10.7 billion in February, following a 6.3% decline in January. This growth was due to advances in the motor vehicle (+8.9%) and motor vehicle parts (+4.8%) industries. These increases came on the heels of atypical assembly plant shutdowns in January. In constant dollars, sales volumes rose 9.3% in motor vehicle manufacturing and 4.8% in motor vehicle parts manufacturing in February.